Thank you for arranging this meeting to discuss the important issues raised in your letter from August 28, 2015.

USAID agrees with MENR that spatial planning is a critical issue for wildlife security, particularly given Kenya’s context of devolution to county levels and rapid development trajectory. Therefore, we are willing to support MENR to develop the National Wildlife Conservation and Management Strategy and the preparation of three pilot county spatial plans for Kajiado, Narok, and Taita Taveta.

Wildlife trafficking has become a global issue that is threatening our world’s biodiversity as well as national security. It has been proven that wildlife trafficking is linked to other transnational crime - - such as human trafficking, drugs and arms - - and terrorists are using wildlife as a source to fund their activities. It is an urgent matter that we have to address. It is everybody’s responsibility to help stop illegal wildlife trade - - across ASEAN, Africa and beyond.

The United States is proud to stand with countries around the world, including those represented here tonight, to combat wildlife trafficking and protect natural resources. Like everyone here tonight, the United States, under President Obama’s leadership, strongly believes the slaughter of thousands of animals and the murder of park rangers trying to protect these species must be stopped.

- I am pleased to join you today in this third annual summit on social work eduation.Vietnam's reforms and rapidly developing economy over the past 20 years has given the people of Vietnam many good things. Poverty has been significantly reduced and many families can achieve comforts and experiences that were hardly imaginable before. In many ways this country is a true success. During the same period, however, Vietnam has been increasingly confronting a range of familiar social issues associated with modernization, rural-urban migration, and other pressures on familie

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak to such an inspiring group of people determined to build a bright future for Zimbabwe. When I received this invitation, the name “The Space” struck me as an appropriate title for why we are here – to create space for people to discuss innovative ideas for development. This is often where the best ideas originate, when we provide space for creative and committed people, like you, to come together and discuss the key topics of the day.

When I became the U.S. Ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, I knew that the issues of territorial disputes, food security, and human rights would feature prominently in my new role. What I have found during my time in the region, however, is that there is another very serious issue that sews a common thread among each of these issues: the degradation of marine and coastal ecosystems due to overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

We at USAID are proud to partner with NASA on SERVIR because we – and the development community more broadly – are just scratching the surface of how geospatial information can be applied to address a wide range of development challenges. As SERVIR has already been doing in Eastern and Southern Africa and across the Hindu-kush Himalaya region, SERVIR-Mekong will help governments and other key decision-makers in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam take advantage of NASA’s publicly available satellite imagery and geospatial analyses.

As many of us gathered here are aware, both the U.S. and the Philippines are founding members of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Broadly, the OGP is an international platform for more meaningful engagements and dialogues between the government and the people it serves. It is a global standard for promoting accountability, transparency, citizen engagement and use of technology to strengthen governance. We are all here because we believe in the power of transparency, accountability, participation, and inclusion in transforming the direction of development.

Despite inspiring global progress in ending preventable maternal and child deaths, we need to continue our collaboration to accomplish this goal within a generation. This is the reason you have traveled from around the globe to India: You are here to advance our common commitment to helping mothers and babies who are dying due to circumstances that we can prevent. You came here to learn from one another, refine strategies for reaching this ambitious yet attainable goal, and then to turn this knowledge into targeted work in countries and communities around the world.